Black Creek Group Breaks Ground on New Rental Tower in Downtown Barrie, Bringing 268 Homes to the City
BARRIE, ON. Black Creek Group has officially broken ground on a new 26-storey rental development at 17 Sophia St. E. in downtown Barrie. The project will bring 268 new rental homes to the city. Of those, 54 units will be set aside as affordable housing under the city’s affordable housing policy. Construction is scheduled to begin at the end of August and is expected to take about three years to complete.
The building will include five floors of above-ground parking. It is one of several rental housing projects that Black Creek Group has planned for the downtown core. The company also has a second tower proposed nearby on Vespra and Bradford Streets, a 36-storey building that would add 462 more units to the area.
Why This Project Is Breaking Ground Now
Jordan Nott, president of Black Creek Group, has pointed to high interest rates and rising construction costs as pressures that have made it harder to build new housing across the region. Projects like this one are meant to help close that gap by bringing a large number of new rental units to market at once, including a meaningful share of affordable homes.
Nicholas Francis, managing partner of Black Creek Group, said the development shows what is possible when the public and private sectors work together, adding that the company is proud to partner with the City of Barrie to deliver housing that will meet the needs of current and future residents.
Barrie Mayor Alex Nuttall called the project “another major step towards increasing the housing supply in Barrie and giving more people the opportunity to find a place that they can afford.” The city has built up an $80 million development charge waiver fund to support housing construction, with developers already drawing on a significant share of it. Council has approved more than 770 affordable units citywide under its affordable housing policy, and the 54 units on Sophia Street add to that total.
What “Affordable” Actually Means for These 54 Units
The affordable units in the project follow the City of Barrie’s definition of affordable rental housing, which is based on Census data. Under that definition, rent should not exceed 30 percent of gross household income for low- to moderate-income households.
In practice, this lines up with rent thresholds set by Ontario’s Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing, which took effect on July 1, 2026: a studio unit at $1,111 per month, a one-bedroom unit at $1,586 per month, a two-bedroom unit at $1,755 per month, excluding utilities, and a unit with three or more bedrooms at $1,987 per month. The same provincial framework sets the affordable home ownership price cap at around $423,000.
When asked whether these rent levels are genuinely affordable for people living in Barrie, Mayor Nuttall said plainly that the thresholds are set by the province, not the city: “I think you’re going to have to ask the province of Ontario that, right, they’re not our thresholds.” He added that the city’s approach is to layer its own incentives and support programs, including the County of Simcoe’s rental supplement program, on top of those baseline rates to lower the effective rent for residents who need extra support.
How the Project Made It This Far
Projects of this size do not move quickly by accident. They depend on a planning path that lines up with what the municipality already wants to see built. Barrie has identified its Downtown Urban Growth Centre as a focal point for higher-density growth and intensification, and that policy direction gives projects like the Sophia Street tower a clearer route through approvals than a similar building might have on the edge of the city.
That does not mean the path is free of friction. Before a project like this reaches the construction stage, it has to work through a range of planning and technical requirements, and a delay in any one of them can push back a schedule that investors and future tenants are both counting on. Among the areas that typically need to be cleared: zoning compliance and density permissions, servicing and parking capacity, environmental review, municipal fee schedules, and coordination across consultants and contractors. The fact that this project has reached groundbreaking, with a firm start date and a three-year construction timeline, reflects the kind of early coordination between the developer and the municipality that keeps a project like this moving.
Why One Tower Alone Will Not Fix Affordability
Ward 2 Councillor Craig Nixon, who represents this part of downtown Barrie, has framed projects like this one as part of a broader supply-and-demand strategy: as more rental units are built across the city, the added supply should help ease rental prices over time, not just for people in designated affordable units but for renters across the city.
This reflects a wider view among developers that no single project solves a housing shortage on its own. Rental demand, comparable rents, and absorption rates all shift over the life of a project, so a tower that breaks ground today is being built against assumptions about a market that will look somewhat different by the time it is ready for tenants.
Looking Ahead to Completion and the Next Tower
Construction on the Sophia Street site is set to begin at the end of August. The project is expected to take approximately three years to complete, with the 268 units, including the 54 affordable homes, coming to market in stages as the building nears completion.
Black Creek Group’s second proposed tower nearby, a 36-storey building with 462 units on Vespra and Bradford Streets, remains in the planning stages. Together, the two projects point to a sustained push from the company to add rental supply to Barrie’s downtown core over the coming years.
About Black Creek Group
Black Creek Group is a Canadian real estate development firm founded by Jordan Nott and Nicholas Francis, with an active presence in downtown Barrie. The Sophia Street tower is one of several rental housing projects the company currently has underway or proposed in the city, including the planned 36-storey, 462-unit tower on Vespra and Bradford Streets.
